The Brahmaputra has always been a great sediment carrier–after the Yangtze Kiang in China, it carries more silt and sand than any other river on earth. Thus the alluvial fans of the Brahmaputra, visible through satellite imagery, reach into the Bay of Bengal and build the natural land area of Bangladesh. But in the past years, the river has become broader and shallower, and its large companions (I don’t like to call them tributaries) are also shrinking in depth, volume and width in the winters.
In 2021 the rains came late, and so did the high water. This year, the first wave of torrential rain hit much of Assam and other states as early as February, then again in April, and flooding began with the third spell of heavy rain in May. The unseasonal, untimely flooding forced farmers to rush to their fields, with labourers and members from their communities, to save their rice crops. They brought their harvest onto the roads–the only high land available to them; they dried it on blue tarpaulin sheets and stored it in sacks arrayed on the high ground.
Thousands were displaced; at least 18 persons died, including several in landslides. This drew some attention though public and media focus was riveted on the devastation in the Dima Hasao district, where a newly minted railway line and railway station were overwhelmed by landslides and floods that toppled trains, uprooted tracks, and severed connections with the rest of the country.
The Guwahati High Court reportedly asked the Northeast Frontier Railway, as part of a Public Interest Litigation hearing, why recommendations from a report of the Commissioner of Railway Safety in 2015 were not implemented while constructing the railway line. It is alleged that the new track was poorly designed and built in a hurry, with engineers and contractors not paying due attention to the local geological structure. This resulted in the felling of thousands of trees, whose roots are what bind the soil together, and the indiscriminate gouging of hills, which weakened the slopes and created the conditions for destructive landslides. A top state official says it will take at least six months to get the system in the district back to a semblance of normalcy.
Inter-connected issues resonate elsewhere. In Dibrugarh and Lakhimpur, senior officials blame increased sedimentation in the river on indiscriminate deforestation in the hills of Arunachal Pradesh directly above, which sends rocks and soil cascading down to the river. This is the fourth and final part of our series, Reflections From A River. Here is the first part, the second part, and the third part of the journeys on the Brahmaputra.
In initial breathless reporting about floods and their aftermath, especially in ‘mainland India’ and the metro media, there seems to be an established pattern. A burst of stories hits headlines in print, television and social media about the ‘unprecedented’ downpour, the scale of flooding, the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, devastation to livestock, property and government infrastructure as well as the notional loss to the economy. Leaders rush to observe the damage from the air (every prime minister has done this in the past 75 years). As the floods recede (there can be three waves of floods), these stories peter out and the media loses interest–until the next year, the next flood.
But what happens to the sapori dwellers, to their lives and their livelihoods, once the floodwaters recede? How many think of that and write or broadcast about the painful return home? Many return to find that the land on which they had built their lives has been either obliterated or, in many instances, shifted downstream, or a new island has grown upstream. This often means the following: rebuilding homes, re-growing farms, re-fashioning livelihoods, not once in a lifetime but two and sometimes three times in a single year.
The challenge of flooding in the Brahmaputra valley is exacerbated by the fact that the great river and its companions have turned broader, but shallower. The question is how? And why?
Until recently, there was no trans-Arunachal highway connecting several large valleys in the sprawling state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders Tibet. Commercial and passenger vehicles were forced to make long, expensive detours into Assam before moving back into Arunachal. Road building is thus regarded as essential for both economic and national security reasons. Yet, the cutting of hill slopes and deforestation that this necessitates means that much of the debris land in the valleys below. It is not clear how much of this is retrieved, or transported elsewhere for construction purposes.
As a result, the carrying capacity of the Brahmaputra and other rivers is diminished by the increasing load of mud and rock and debris, forcing the rivers to dump the silt as they travel onwards, reducing in depth while broadening in girth. Changing weather patterns are creating new challenges for farmers, businesses and administrators. At Guwalbari, a village of 900 members of the Mishing tribal community in Lakhimpur district, Pushpo Pegu gazed at a field of green paddy and rued the loss of last summer’s crop. “The rains came too late last year,” said Pegu, a health worker in the village, gesturing at his neighbour’s shimmering green patch of paddy. “Things are so uncertain; we don’t know when to plant and what to plant, because the weather could change anytime and bring rain.”
At Guwalbari, which as its name suggests is a place for dairy farming, each home is a light structure of flexible but tough bamboo lattice topped with straw or tin roofs and standing on strong bamboo stilts. It’s an indigenous design, perfected over the centuries by this community in Upper Assam to protect them from both floods and, in earlier times, from wild animals.
We climb to Pegu’s chang ghar, as such homes are called, via a log with small steps notched into it. Inside, it is cool, dark and airy–a refreshing change to the long boat ride, a trek through fields and the village, and an animated discussion with a group of village women and elders. We sit on little murhas made from plastic sacking stitched together and placed on the bamboo floor. The seats are comfortable, and the recycling is impressive. The womenfolk serve us the cooling sai apong, freshly brewed rice beer, in broad brass bowls. The apong is followed by bowls of pork in curried pumpkin, laced with garlic and black pepper, a unique and delicious combination.
These are pristine spaces of bewitching beauty, still largely untouched by the scarring power of unplanned development and infrastructure. There are opportunities here–such as for off-circuit tourism for backpackers, environmentalists and researchers–and in other spaces elsewhere, even as the changing weather patterns provoked by climate change create new vulnerabilities and challenges…